Got Plans Redux?: Your First CD

By
Julia Beizer

So, apparently you guys are really into Tori Amos. Or at least you were way back in the day.

During yesterday's Got Plans?, we staged a contest to give away a $75 gift certificate to Legal Sea Foods. The idea was simple: write in with the name of your first CD and tell us a story about it. The responses came flooding in. Read some of our favorites in the transcript.

As promised, I'm posting a few more after the jump. But first, let me draw your attention to this response that came in after the chat ended. Someone backs me up on my Silk obsession.

Re Julia: OMG, "Freak Me" by Silk. I LOVE that song. That and "Ditty" by Paperboy. I was in 8th grade listening to Silk on a tape I made off the radio since no way was my mom going to let me buy that. I had such a crush on the guy with the deep voice (I had an MTV ban, so no idea what he looked like.)

You'll find more after the jump. Add your faves in the comments and don't forget to join us next week.

Washington, D.C.: I didn't get to buy CDs because my older sister had the CD player and was the boss of the music. I think her first one was either the Nelson CD (I can't imagine there was second one) or the Paula Abdul "Forever Your Girl" CD. This warped me into thinking those Nelson kids were really, really talented for a long time. Also, my dad loved explaining over and over how they were Ricky Nelson's kids and how Ozzie and Harriet was a great show.

First CD: Was Billy Joel's "River of Dreams." For a school project I had to change the words of a song into a commercial for vitamins. I blasted the title song in class and tried to sing my jingle over it. No idea what the point of that was.

Herndon, Va.: First CD was a bootleg of a Led Zeppelin radio show (since released officially). I was in college and two years away from having the $ to buy my own CD player, but I was in a head shop, saw that CD and had to own it. It was worth it. What a great show.

Falls Church, Va.: When I was about 8, my dad (being a baby boomer) decided that my sister and I needed to see "Help!" It was the Beatles, and we were impressionable. We were entranced. We started listening to Oldies 100 and soon knew all the words to all the songs that came on the air, and when Christmas rolled around, we got our gifts -- I got the red album double-disc set of "Beatles 1962-1966," and she got the blue disc set of "Beatles 1967-1970." Between us, we rocked out for many a year.

Silver Spring, Md.: First CD ever that I purchased was 311's self-titled album which I bought at a used CD store in Dupont Circle on P and 21st Street when there used to be a couple of used CD stores by there. I was in middle school, but looked very small for my age then, and I swear the guy behind the cash register gave me this weird look, like "Aren't you just like 9 years old and too young to even be here by yourself?" Either way, he took my money and charged me for half the price on the label. Too bad those places closed.

Petworth: First CD: actually, it wasn't mine. It was the boyfriend's. It was the early '80s, and we were in college. (And now you can guess how old I am.)

He had a stereo -- and was planning to add a CD player over the summer. Tower Records opened on campus, and we went shopping. (Yeah, we went to GW). And we bought some records. And he bought "Dark Side of the Moon" because he had heard how good the sound from a CD was, and he wanted to hear that as his first CD ever.

Took him several more months to buy a CD player, and it was several years after that when we were finally able to stop agonizing every time a new album came out: "Do we buy the record now for $9, or wait a month and pay $15 for the CD?"

Georgetown, first CD: I desperately wanted Guns N' Roses Use Your Illusion I and II, but my mom was convinced that because of the parental advisory label that it would rot my mind. And, well, because it was Guns N' Roses!

So I had to give my much cooler, couple-years- older friend some money so she could go to the store and buy that CD for me. I could only listen to it when my mom wasn't home (and of course I hid it under my bed) but it was worth it.

First CD: ...was actually purchased for me by my then boyfriend (I was still clinging to cassettes for some reason, so I was late to the scene). It was the Spin Doctors, because I really thought "Two Princes" was all about us.

But the music choice was not indicative of the outcome: I have been married for almost a decade.

Notorious BIG -- Ready to Die: I spent summers in the Bronx with my father. He passed away in '94 and this album hit home. I don't know if it was the hard N.Y. sound or the great stories in each song. It just reminded me of N.Y. and the time I spent there with my father. It's still one of the best albums ever made, and the songs still hit me every time I listen to them. I have the album in my iPod and listen to it often. :(

Dupont Circle, D.C.: I remember somehow convincing my dad at the store that I really really needed this cassette, complete with two young kids wearing their clothes backward. Why he ever bought a Kris Kross tape for a shy, Barbie-playing 8-year-old girl is beyond me, but the music would go on to terrorize them for several months.

Shortly after, I received a mini boombox for Christmas, a monstrous thing for something that referred to itself as "mini." Surely as a means to make up for the terrible lapse in judgment with the Kris Kross tape, the boombox gift was accompanied by the soundtracks to "The Bodyguard" and "Aladdin," both of which were played on heavy rotation. I don't remember my parents drinking much, but I don't know how their sanity remained intact. Earplugs, maybe.

Arlington, Va.: Soundgarden (the one with "Black Hole Sun"). My dad got it for me because he wanted to listen to it. (This was 1994 I think, and I also got a new CD-playing stereo. It was about 2' x 1' x 8". Enormous. Awesome. Incidentally, I also wanted to listen to Soundgarden, but seriously, he couldn't buy me the Green Day CD?)